Humor writer Julie Vick joins us this week to talk about all things funny.
Tips and Tricks:
- Surprise is a key element for writing humor. Play up the unexpected. The rule of three is part of this.
- If you’re going to be satirizing someone directly, make sure not to “punch down.”
- You don’t having to be funny on the first draft. Editing can and should make things funnier.
- Read your work out loud to judge your comedic timing
- Put the funniest bits at the end of a paragraph.
- Analyze reading that you find funny to figure out how the writer did it.
- Your type and level of humor will depend on your genre. Make sure to think about your intended audience as you’re crafting jokes.
- Humor can work differently in fiction vs. nonfiction, particularly if you’re writing fiction in a 3rd person POV. Formatting like footnotes and parentheses and italics can change how your funny elements come through in the end.
- Humor can carry the reader along so they don’t pay as much attention to other aspects of the writing.
- Certain phonemes are inherently funnier than others. Saying “Tropicana” is funnier than saying “orange juice.”
- Comparisons can be very helpful for adding humor to writing.
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Cover art by Maggie Walker
